The Bangor Daily News from Bangor, Maine • 1

1 S' LARGEST DAILY NEWSPAPER A The Weather Saturday Sale 77791 A i Fair and not so cold possible snow Wednesday Full Report on Page I NEW TORE TIMES NEWS SERVICE UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATED PRESS TEL 942-4881 491 MAIN ST BANGOR MAINE VOL 74 NO 16 VOL 74 NO 170 Facets Of A Storm JANUARY 1 1963 BUT (NEWS Photos by Maher Hall) MILKMEN AND OT HERS MADE THEIR ROUNDS MOTORISTS WERE HELPLESSLY STRANDED tic- THESE WEARY TRAVELERS SLEET AT PILOTS GRILL a 4 I late Storm aine Digging Out After Snow Barrage Weather Bureau As Surprised As Anyone By Storm By VELTON PEABODY Weathermen were openly admitting Monday that theywere Just about as surprised as anyone by storm which deposited an unpredlcted 37 inches of new snow on portions of Eastern Maine Up to 11 a Sunday when By MIKE McMAHON Maine residents did their best Monday to dig out from the worst snowstorm to hit the state in several decades At least four deaths were attributed to the storm which blanketed parts of the State with more than three feet of new snow Fred Morse 94 died Sunday while shovelmg snow at his home at Pittsfield Robert Harper 52 was found dead Monday morning a few hundred yards from his home at Orland Authorities attributed his death to over-exertion Harper had walked from the St Regis INTERNATIONAL DECEMBER 31 1962 yards In thaUstojm without Knew Here" said someone else all know that here nothing anyone can do until the storm However something WAS being done The darkness of the 'night hid countless acts of heroism by unsung nameless heroes Only jthe victims of the storm can ever know the full (story Unidentified snowplow operators battled through drifts and freezing winds to rescue stranded motorists from mired automobiles imagine how it said one man in describing the exploits wife and I were trapped in the car fy more than three hours The gine had stalled and it was (Continued on Page 4 CoL 2) EIGHT CENTS He found Connors slumped over the wheel where he died a few minutes later Fred A Townsend 69 of Calais died of a heart attack while walking on Main Street in Calais The storm tied vehicular traffic in knots Old Town got 37 inches of new snow bringing the total amount of snow on the ground to 47 inches Hundreds of travelers were stranded in the Bangor area and city life slowed to a crawL (See separate story) Safety officials pleaded with householders to be on guard against fires because firemen could not travel on the heavily drifted roads In the town of Washington a 1-story wooden residence owned by Mrs Jean Svenningsen burned to the ground as firemen fought towering drifts The storm was statewide but the Bangor area bore the brunt of it Plows and graders brought from as far 'as 160 miles away operated through the day in an effort to open the snow clogged roads Adding to the discomfort were temperatures as low as 15 degrees below zero at Augusta minus 13 at Greenville and Rum-ford minus 6 at Portland: minus 5 at Brunswick and Millinocket and minus 4 at Bangor Winds of up to 20 knots drifted roads nearly as fast as the hardworking highway crews opened them to traffic At 9 Monday state police listed the following roads as closed to traffic: Route 1A from Hampden to Belfast Route 9 from Hampden west Route just west of Machias roads in the Castine-Blue Hill area Route 6 from Lincoln east Route 16 from Orono to Milo and Route 9 the Airline Road Police said jiigh-way crews were working and most of the roads were expected to be open by morning The Weather Bureaift Portland gave the following al cumulations as of 7 a Moi day The fust figure is new snow the figure in parentheses is tha total amount of snow now on tha ground Portland (6) Brunswick (17) Augusta 10 (18) Old Town 37 47) Millinocket 30 (45) Houlton 1 20 35) Caribou 17 (26) Greenville 17 (27) Rum-ford 11 (15) Eastport 11 (17) (Continued on Page 2 CoL about his wife Irma and thefr six children ranging in age from 12 years to 11 months The sergeant was unable to go home because of the storm There were no telephone con-nections He knew the food supply was low realize it had been exhausted Wally vice presidents and treasurer of Brothers Inc of Bangor geared the 1954 vintage snowmohfle into low when he struck the high drift (Continued on'Page 2 CoL 4) New England Staggers After Severe Storm Paper Company in Bucksport and it was believed that he died about 2 am Monday before reaching home Earl Connors 67 of Otter Creek died at the wheel of his car on US Route' In Warren shortly after 4:30 pm Sunday The Connors car was being guided through drifing snow by State Police Lt Robert McKen-ney commanding officer of the Maine State Police Barracks at Thomaston when the car began weaving from side to side barely missing an oncoming vehicle Lt McKenney got his car in front of the Connors car and stopped it Western Massachusetts were stranded for varying periods on snow-blocked highways Cold dropped down as deep as 15 below zero in inhabited areas and some skiers braved 29 belo at Franconia NH Bitter gales which at times 8p preached hurricane violence tore down trees branches and power wires in many communities leaving residents under wraps in heat-kss homes while water pipes and even heating systems froze The wind ripped the ice encrusted Nantucket lightship from its mooring and the vessel required a Coast Guard convoy to sheltered water near Provmce-towA The winds tossed the 70 foot fishing vessel Katy aground off Gloucester and Coast Guards winds seas and saved all eight crewmen A distress call came from the 66-foot New Bedford fishing boat Tocsin taking water in 30 foot seas 125 miles east of Cape Cod and the cutter Casco went to her aid Gusts which Cape Codders believed reached 95 miles an hour caused power losses flipped over a 120-foot police radio tower at Falmouth tossed an empty 20-foot fishing boat Atomic Wave onto a beach halted plane flights (Continued on Page 4 CoL 5) VT gon But the Pilots Grill would be a good place to spend a pleasant hour or so waiting for the snow to stop That was several hours ago The excitement had given way to boredom and then to anxiety They noticed that the new arrives laughing Most were frightened Some wept Some clearly showed the pain of frostbite Trapped" said someone in the crowd just beard it on the radio" Someone else 'strained to see through a window into the darkness "The-storm seems to be letting he said someone could walk into Bangor and get One of the late arrivals still shivering from the cold? answered impossible You walk more than a few Spotlight On The News Snowbound Car Is Given Ticket ROCKLAND A New York motorist headed in to the teeth of the weekend nor-easter decided to call it quits Saturday and abandoned his late-model car on Main Street here Monday morning the bright red convertible could not be seen under a mountain of snow 'until a young boy and his "snow shovel extricated it AH that but this attached to the door handle? You guessed it A parking ticket courtesy of the Rockland Police Department Bus Plunges In River Die ST-REGIS Mont (UPI)-A Greyhound bus full of holiday travelers sideswiped a grain truck on an icy curve Monday and plunged down a rocky bank Into the St Regis River Six persons were killed w-eluding the bus driver and the relief driver of the truck Seven other persons were hospitalized and an additional 14 to 18 treated for minor Injuries and released New Telstar To Be Lofted NEW YORK A second Telstar communications satellite will be launched in the spring the American Telephone and Telegraph Co announced Monday The company said it was not possible at this time to give an exact date for the launch STORM in pictures Two full pages of photos Pages 10 1L ROSE BOWL pits top college Oh By The Way-Happy New Year! The new year moved In relentlessly Monday evening on the van of blizzaVd not waiting for ideal conditions for the hundreds who planned to celebrate the event on party rounds But while snow remained piled to the eaves of houses and cars inched along through narrow white walled tunnels Nancy Bates Orono High School senior was taking no chances on missing the opportunity to ring in 1963 while wishing everyone a happy new year (NEWS Photo by Maher) (he storm already was well under way in the Bangor mea weathermen in Portland ana Boston still were predicting snow flurries for Maine The 11 a zonal forecast out of Portland acknowledged that on the way but even at thaf point the Weather Bdreau aware of what was in store a spokesman for the Bureau said At 1 with the Federal Aviation Agency already measuring 14 inches of new snow at Old Town the Weather Bureau at Portland and the District Forecast Center in Boston compared notes by telephone and agreed that it was no ordinary storm Since it was too late to send word of warping by the usual channels through Boston Bureaus of the Associated Press and United Press it was decided to issue a special bulletin directly Jo the State Civil Defense headquarters in Augusta From there the belated warning was passed on to the various agencies concerned Essence of the special bulletin was that the storm area could expect another foot of snow And even that issued during the height of the fell 11 inches short of what actually happened in Old Town which recorded 37 inches of new snow all told Weathermen however were offering little apology Monday one of the worst type o' storms to predict" a Weather Bureau spokesman said in Portland Actually he went on to explain' it was sort of a combination of storms watching an elongated Ipw pressure area extending from Laborador southward along the East Coast of the United States We expected the most Maine would get was a coastal brush so we predicted flumes (Condoned on Page 4 CoL 5) Sorry! The Weather Snowed Us Pardon us please! As you undoubtedly noticed there was no NEWS Monday For the first time since 1834 we failed to -provide our readers with heir morning paper sorry We managed to publish during the Bangor fire of 1911 and we kept our record intact during the great' flood of 1936 There have been close calls in the past but we managed during storms hurricanes and power failures unexpected snowstorm simply had as stumped Still if you look' at -it this way a single miss in more than 125 years really bad Saga Of Storm Victims Like War Refugees They Found Company In Misery BOSTON A deep complex ocean storm which brought sub-zero gales to all New England and 20 foot snowdrifts to parts of Maine has whirlecLeast-ward leaving behind a trail that included death frozen homes fires frost-bitten firemen and distress at sea Thousands of motorists and bus riders most- of them in Maine but some in New Hampshire and Crews Still Battle Snow 3 Feet Deep Emergency crews Monday continued- a 48-hour battle against the nearly 40 inches snow as thousands of vehicles were buried or ditched' and hundreds of persons stranded on main arteries into metropolitan Bangor "Up to late Monday evening no death or serious injury had been reported in this area A few cases of frostbite were treated Police public works state highway crews and private rescue parties manning plows-even a were busy Sunday night and all day Monday bringing fiito Bangor stranded motorists some whom had made their ways to homes or impromptu community shelters Old time veterans of public works fire departments and state highway crews called the two-day storm the worst they had ever seen In this area Windblown drifts mounted to from five to 11 feet in AD the main arteries were opened Monday through constant plowing but side streets were stm piled high with snow Route 2 'between Hermon and Bangor was still a major bottleneck Monday as was Route 1A in Hampden1 leading into the city Hundreds of persons were housed at the Pilots Grill overnight being provided hot coffee by overworked (Continued on Page 4 CoL I) Snowmobile Mercy Mission Rescues Mom 6 Children By BOB TAYLOR They could have been refugees from a war The restaurant was warm and they were well-dressed Yet they sat huddled together in family groups as if chilled by the thoughts of the storm which raged outside Uncertainty Confusion Uncertainty and fu 1 showed in the faces of the adults The children playful at first no grew tired The evening wore slowly on and added to their number A handful at first then 50 More came and soon there -were too many to count Earlier in the evening it had been exciting Travelers caught in the storm have something 4 certain camradene Jokes came easily ThC jstorm had been' unexpected It was too bad they had become stuck so dose to By ED MATHESON Unplowed Route 9 with 15-foot snow drifts jutting into the air like sand dunes stop Wally Sawyer and his snowmobile from rescuing a mother and her six young children from their snowbound and foodless home in Dixmont It was an experience Wally soon forget nor will his passengers 1 Wally-was called to the rescue by S-SgL Joseph Labbe of Dow AFB who was concerned I 4 Vi hi.